By Sam Belden
Danielle Burns cuts to the basket. She had a season-high 22 points against Duquesne on Thursday. (Courtesy of Fordham Athletics)
This past week was another strong one for the Fordham women’s basketball team. Coming off of a third-place finish at the Miami Thanksgiving Tournament, the Rams kicked off their conference schedule in style with a win over Duquesne on Thursday and kept it going with another victory over Boston College on Sunday.
The team returned from the Sunshine State with a new appreciation for the Thanksgiving holiday. “Two of the major highlights of the trip was Thanksgiving dinner at [junior guard] Tiffany Suarez’s house and an evening with Luis and Mercy San Miguel and the Miami chapter of Fordham alums,” said head coach Stephanie Gaitley. “Both were such classic cases of families opening their homes to our travel party and allowing everyone to feel the Thanksgiving spirit.”
After returning to the Bronx on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the Rams prepared for Thursday’s game against Duquesne, their first Atlantic 10 opponent of the season. The highly anticipated contest was a rematch of a second round game in last year’s conference tournament, which ended in a five-point Fordham loss. While Thursday’s was one of several conference games set up by the A-10 in order to build excitement throughout the month of December, the rest of Fordham’s conference schedule does not get underway until January.
Duquesne scored the first bucket of the game within the first 15 seconds, but the Rams quickly went on an 8-0 run, highlighted by three-pointers from senior guard Hannah Missry and senior forward Danielle Burns. Burns would go on to be the star of the game, finishing with 22 points and seven rebounds.
With a nice advantage to start the game, the Rams remained a step ahead of the Dukes for the rest of the quarter. Three more field goals, including a three from freshman guard Kate Kreslina with 1:30 remaining, were all they needed to take a 16-9 lead into the second period.
Duquesne was much better on offense in the second quarter, kicking it off with an inside jumper from Kadri-Ann Lass to cut the lead to five. While another three-pointer from Burns helped control the damage, two more good shots for the Dukes put them within three points of the lead. They struggled to keep the Fordham offense in check, however, repeatedly falling victim to the Rams’ offensive bursts. Missry and junior guard Asnate Fomina hit a pair of threes as the half wound down, allowing Fordham to carry a 31-23 lead into the break.
The Rams began to take control of the game in the third quarter. A seemingly reenergized Duquesne offense cut the lead to six on a pair of occasions at the beginning of the period, but they suffered through a four-minute scoreless drought in the middle. The Rams, meanwhile, were aggressive from behind the arc, attempting seven three-pointers and hitting three of them, including the 254th and 255th of Missry’s career. The New Jersey native moved to fourth among active Division I players and 11th all-time in the Atlantic 10.
The Dukes went on a 5-0 run towards the end of the quarter, but the Rams bit back hard with a 7-3 stretch, highlighted by Burns’ three-pointer at the buzzer. Heading into the final period, the score was 49-37 Fordham.
Duquesne certainly had enough time to mount a comeback, but the team lacked the offensive firepower, failing to move the deficit into the single digits at any point in the fourth quarter. The Dukes struggled to find their rhythm and allowed Burns to score five points in the first three minutes, leaving them at a 14-point disadvantage. Neither side made anything until garbage time rolled around, when they matched each other shot for shot. The Rams took it by a score of 64-51, serving up a bit of revenge from last season’s season-ending loss.
In addition to Burns, Missry also did plenty of heavy lifting for the Rams, scoring 13 points. Junior forward G’mrice Davis fell just one point shy of a double-double, scoring nine and grabbing 10 rebounds.
With A-10 play off to a good start, the Rams got set to host a non-conference opponent: the Boston College Eagles of the ACC. With a 2-5 record, the Eagles entered the game on a bit of a cold streak and struggled, falling to Fordham by a score of 56-49.
The two sides exchanged baskets to start the game, but the Rams quickly took control thanks to Davis’ scoring ability. After making the game’s opening bucket, she drew a pair of shooting fouls and scored four more points for her team. She then made a layup and a jumper on the next two Fordham possessions to put the Rams up by eight. In all, Davis scored Fordham’s first 10 points of the day before Suarez hit a jumper with 3:53 remaining in the quarter.
With less than one fourth of the game down, Davis had already secured her fourth double-digit scoring performance of the season. “[She] is really coming into her own as a player,” Gaitley remarked prior to the game.
With a 16-10 lead after the first quarter, the Rams continued to push ahead. The Eagles scored a pair of buckets within the first two minutes of the second period, but two Davis jumpers and three-pointers for Missry and Kreslina allowed Fordham to take a 12-point lead with 4:15 remaining in the half. Boston College scored three of the next four baskets, but another three for Kreslina kept the Rams squarely in the driver’s seat, leading 29-20 at the half.
Fordham came out of the locker room looking to add to its lead and did just that, scoring the first four points of the second half to push the lead to 13. The two sides were evenly matched for most of the period, however, and a 7-2 run for the Eagles to close out the quarter left BC trailing by just seven with 10 minutes of play remaining.
The game’s final quarter saw a couple of brief comeback attempts from Boston College. The Eagles made two of the first three baskets of the period to sit just five points behind with 9:05 left, but the Rams were resilient, maintaining their lead and then pushing it to 11 thanks to a pair of inside buckets from Burns.
With 5:39 remaining in the game, Fordham held a healthy advantage, but spotty defense allowed Boston College to go on a 6-2 run — only a pair of Fomina free throws prevented the Eagles from cutting further into the lead. Then, suddenly, the offense disappeared, with neither side scoring for the next three minutes. While Fordham was doing its best to run down the clock, it was the Eagles who failed to perform under the pressure. They managed to move within five points of the lead thanks to a layup from Mariella Fasoula with 0:30 left in the game, but 10 seconds later, a Davis jumper put it out of reach. The Rams came away from the game with the 56-49 victory.
Davis led the way for the Rams, grabbing nine rebounds to go along with her 22 points. Kreslina was also a big contributor, scoring 13. Although Fordham hit just 38.9 percent of its field goals to Boston College’s 49.0 percent, the Rams’ perfect 10-for-10 performance from the foul line made the difference.
In a bit of notable news, Missry’s lone three-pointer of the game was also the 256th of her career, moving her into the all-time top 10 in A-10 history.
The Rams are now 6-2 on the season. They will see their next action on Wednesday, Dec. 7, on the road against Iona.
